Caraval (Caraval 1)

Julian looked as if he were holding back a chuckle. “You keep forgetting this is a game. She was either acting, or someone else was pretending to be her. Either way, I don’t think you need to worry about your sister. Trust me when I say Legend knows how to take care of his guests.”

Julian’s last words should have eased the knots in Scarlett’s stomach, but something about the way Julian spoke made them tighten instead. His smile left his eyes cold, untouched.

“How do you know how Legend treats his guests?”

“Look at the room we were given because you’re his special visitor.” Julian’s accent thickened as he said the word special. “It makes sense to think he’s put your sister somewhere just as nice.”

Again, Scarlett should have felt better. Tella was not in any danger. Her sister was merely a part of the game, and an important part at that. Yet that’s exactly what made Scarlett so unsettled. Why of all people would Legend choose her sister?

“Ah, I get it,” Julian added. “You’re jealous.”

“No I’m not.”

“It would make sense if you were. You were the one who wrote him letters all those years. No one would blame you if you felt bad he chose her instead.”

“I’m not jealous,” Scarlett repeated, but this only made the sailor smile wider as he continued to toy with the knob from the broken wardrobe, making it disappear and reappear between his deft fingers. A cheap magic trick.

She tried to think of Tella’s disappearance this way, a simple sleight of hand—she wasn’t gone for good, just out of Scarlett’s reach.

She reread her first clue again. Number two you’ll discover in the rubble of her departure. As Tella’s sister, Scarlett should have had an advantage. If something in the room did not belong to Tella, Scarlett would know, but there were hardly any items left. Except for the glass button and the picture card in her hand, which upon second glance no longer looked quite so ordinary as before.

“What is it?” Julian asked. When Scarlett didn’t answer right away his tone turned charming. “Come on, I thought we were a team.”

“Being teammates has mostly benefitted you, not me.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘mostly.’ You forget, if it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t even be here.”

“I could claim the same,” Scarlett argued. “Last night, I saved you from being kicked out of the game, but you were the one who slept in our room!”

“You could have slept in the bed as well.” Julian toyed with the top button of his shirt.

Scarlett scowled. “You know that was never an option.”

“All right.” He put his hands up in an exaggerated surrender. “From now on it will be a more even partnership. I’ll keep telling you what I know about the game. We share with each other what we learn, and we trade days for the room. When you sleep in there, I promise I will not. Though you are welcome to join me whenever you want.”

“Scoundrel,” Scarlett muttered.

“I’ve been called much worse. Now, show me what’s in your hands.”

Scarlett looked out toward the hall, making certain no one was lingering outside the door. Then she turned the picture card in her hand toward Julian. “This did not belong to my sister.”

14

When Scarlett was eleven, she’d been wildly in love with castles. It didn’t matter if they were made of sand or stone or bits of imagination. They were fortresses, and Scarlett imagined if she lived in one, she’d be protected and treated like a princess.

Tella had no such romantic notions. She did not want to be cossetted, or spend her days locked away in some musty old castle. Tella wanted to travel the world, to see the ice villages of the Far North and the jungles of the Eastern Continent. And what better way to do that than with a beautiful emerald-green fish tail.

Tella never told Scarlett, but she wanted to be a mermaid.

Scarlett had laughed so hard she’d cried when she’d discovered Tella’s hidden cache of picture cards. All of them with glittering mermaids—and mermen!

After that, whenever they fought, or Tella teased Scarlett, Scarlett was tempted to taunt her about being a mermaid. At least castles were real, but even Scarlett, who at the time still had impractical dreams and an untethered imagination, knew mermaids did not exist. But Scarlett never said a word. Not when Tella teased her about her castles, or about her growing fixation with Caraval. Because Tella’s fantasy of being a mermaid gave Scarlett hope—that despite their mother’s abandonment, and their father’s lack of love, her sister could still dream, and that was something Scarlett never wanted to destroy.

“My sister’s picture cards were a very particular collection,” she told Julian. “Tella would not have had a picture card with a castle on it.”

“I believe that’s actually a palace,” said Julian.

“It’s still not a picture she would have had. This must be the next clue.”